Keynote Speaker

Elvis Wagner

  • Associate Professor of TESOL

  • College of Education and Human Development, Temple University

  • Email: elviswag@temple.edu


Biography

Elvis Wagner is an Associate Professor of TESOL at Temple University, where he is the coordinator of the Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics program as well as coordinator of the World Languages Education program. He has been a college EFL teacher in the Peace Corps in Poland, a public high school ESL and Spanish teacher in New York, an adult ESL teacher in the English language program at the United Nations, and a college-level ESL instructor at different universities in the U.S.


In his research, he examines how L2 listeners process and comprehend unscripted, spontaneous spoken language, and how this type of language differs from the scripted spoken texts learners often encounter in the L2 classroom and L2 listening tests. He has published extensively in journals such as Language Assessment Quarterly, Language Testing, TESOL Quarterly, Foreign Language Annals, and Applied Linguistics. He recently co-authored (with Gary Ockey in 2018) the book Assessing L2 Listening: Moving Towards Authenticity, published by John Benjamins, and is the co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Listening, to be published in 2023.


Keynote Speech Title:

“Rediscovering Listening in the Language Classroom: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn”

Abstract: Long viewed as the “forgotten skill” in teaching and research, second language (L2) listening is being “rediscovered”, as it is the focus of increased attention in L2 research, materials development, assessment, and pedagogy. There seems to be a recognition in the field that listening is a vital component of a language learner’s interactional competence, and that learning how to listen can and should be explicitly taught in the L2 classroom in order to promote L2 development.

In this presentation, I will quickly review how L2 listening has been traditionally situated in the field of second language acquisition, and suggest some reasons why listening has traditionally been overlooked and under-researched. I will then provide an overview of how L2 listening is taught, focusing on how the spoken input used in L2 listening materials, classrooms, and assessments is often very different from the type of spoken input that learners typically experience in real-world language settings. I will suggest reasons for this mismatch, including the impact that large-scale testing has on how listening is taught. I will also review how scripted spoken language differs from unscripted spoken language, and how teachers can integrate unscripted spoken language into their materials and classrooms. The talk will conclude with some “takeaways” for L2 listening teachers that provide useful and practical advice for teaching listening.


Research Interests

  • Second Language Assessment

  • Language Pedagogy

  • Language Comprehension/Development


Selected Publications



  • Wang, L., & Wagner, E. (2020). Investigating the possible washback effects of the College English Test--Band Four on English teaching and learning in China. The Journal of Asia TEFL, 17(4): 1214-1235. http://dx.doi.org/10.18823/asiatefl.2020.17.4.4.1214


  • Liao, Y.F., Wagner, E., & Wagner, S. (2018). Test-takers’ attitudes and beliefs about the Spoken texts used in EFL listening tests. English Teaching and Learning, 42(3-4), 227-246. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42321-018-0013-5



  • Wagner, E. & Toth, P. (2014). Teaching and testing L2 Spanish listening using scripted versus unscripted texts. Foreign Language Annals, 47(3), 404-422. https://doi.org/10.1111/flan.12091



  • Toth, P., Wagner, E., & Moranski, K. (2013). “Co-constructing” explicit L2 knowledge among high school Spanish learners during inductive grammar instruction. Applied Linguistics, 34(3), 279-303. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/ams049